Date: 03 June 2018

Executive Report of the 3rd GEO Data Providers Workshop

Authors of the report:

GEOSS Platform Operations team

Contents

Workshop factsheet 3

Frontal sessions 3

Interactive sessions, Hackathon and Arduino session 4

Main outcomes 4

GEOSS Ecosystem growth 4

GEOSS Community Ecosystem 4

GEOSS Technological Ecosystem 5

The Regional Hubs 6

New breed of interoperability tool/science to leverage GEOSS 7

A focus on the GEO Global priorities: Climate, Disasters and SDGs 7

An increasing demand for easily usable EO data 7

Annex A: List of Organizations by Country represented at the workshop 9

Annex B: Matching of the Workshop sessions against the meeting focus areas 13

Annex C: Important Engagements immediately resulted from the 3rd GEO Data Providers workshop 14

Workshop factsheet The 3rd GEO Data Providers Workshop was held at the ESRIN, the establishment of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Frascati (Italy) from the 2nd to the 4th of May 2018.

The event was co-organized by the GEO Secretariat, ESA, CNR-IIA (Italy), United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Geneva (Switzerland). The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission contributed to the event report.

The workshop brought together more than 200 data providers and users from more than 130 organizations (see Annex A) from 33 countries and 5 continents and provided a space to share experiences and knowledge that can

improve the ways in which Earth observations are managed, communicated, disseminated and used to enhance

the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS)

The Workshop agenda included 97 presentations and was organized according to: 26 scientific sessions, 11 training sessions, one Hackathon and one arduino sensors do-it-yourself session for citizen science.

At the workshop, several organizations contacted the GEO Secretariat and decided to be engaged in GEOSS –see Annex C.

Frontal sessions The scientific sessions covered a wide range of thematic areas (see Annex B), including:

● The GEOSS Platform journey (its evolution, the state of the art, and the ongoing integration with GEO Flagships and Initiatives);

● Data management and sharing principles and processes; ● The role of Regional and National GEOSS; ● User needs and success stories; ● Integration of GEOSS Platform and other infrastructures; and ● Earth observation for decision making across specific international policy priorities (UN SDGs, Sendai

Framework for DRR, Paris Climate Agreement).

Presenters introduced and discussed the benefits, opportunities and challenges of using the GEOSS Platform. International initiatives and programs presented their successful integration with the Platform (e.g. AtlantOS and GEO Wetlands), while others introduced their ideas to utilize the GEOSS Platform components e.g. DBAR (Digital Belt and Road) initiative, GNT-H and GCOS.

The main topics that the lively discussions dealt with included:

● The challenges to alleviate the data preparation and processing burden for users; ● The relevance, opportunities and challenges related to regional GEOSS initiatives; ● The increased private sector contributions; and ● The need for further statistical reporting and monitoring to assess GEOSS performance and user

satisfaction.

Interactive sessions, Hackathon and Arduino session The training sessions provided information on how to to get engaged in GEOSS via the latest GEOSS Platform services, dealing with:

● Guidelines for use of the GEOSS Portal; ● Registration via the GEOSS Yellow Pages and Resources Accessibility via the GEOSS Status Checker; ● Connecting User Portals leveraging the GEOSS Mirror and GEOSS Widgets; and ● Enabling GEOSS Interoperability using the GEOSS APIs.

The Hackathon challenged developers to create data discovery and access applications, using the GEOSS Platform services and tools, to address global challenges.

During the Arduino session, participants learned how to build sensors that could be used by citizens to collect local data, e.g. temperature, humidity, air-pressure, smoke, etc., and also connect to GEOSS.

Main outcomes The Workshop provided an insight on the current status and the potential evolution of GEOSS.

GEOSS Ecosystem growth The 2nd GEO Data Providers Workshop raised the awareness of an emergent GEOSS Ecosystem, dealing with both technological and Community aspects. The 3rd GEO Data Providers Workshop demonstrated the strengthening and enlargement of this Ecosystem , its maturity and consistent growth.

The 3rd GEO Data Providers Workshop demonstrated the strengthening of the GEOSS (community and technological) Ecosystem.

GEOSS Community Ecosystem Since its launch (as side event at the GEO XIII Plenary in Russia in 2016), the GEO Data Providers Workshop has doubled its attendance at every meeting. This is a clear sign of the high interest in the GEOSS Platform expressed over the last three years by the GEO Community and in particular, by EO Data Providers and Users. There is the need for the GEO Community to get together around a technical meeting.

There is the need for the GEO Community to get together around a technical workshop.

While the EO Community is getting more and more engaged, at the same time, GEOSS is opening up to a wider spectrum of data providers and users, ranging from specialists and researchers to non-scientists, including decision makers from the public and the private sector. There is also increased interest from citizens.

On the other hand, the transition from a Common Infrastructure to a modern Web-based Platform, opened the contribution to a wider range of technology and knowledge providers in GEOSS e.g. IT experts, mobile apps developers and AI specialists.

The GEOSS communication and control processes are following this evolution: the governance for becoming a GEOSS Data Provider and sharing resources was consolidated (e.g. a simplified procedure for the registration and brokering of new data systems contributing to GEOSS has been implemented) and the service provision for the development of Community applications and portals was decisively improved.

GEOSS Community has evolved including stakeholders from non-EO domains and new user categories.

User needs are a clear priority for the GEOSS Platform and will be an essential driver for the future GEOSS evolvement – empowered by the ultimate technology evolution. This requires the further engagement of users in the GEOSS Ecosystem.

User needs have become a priority for the present GEOSS Platform and are an essential driver for the GEOSS evolvement.

The main Workshop objective was to “bring together Earth observation data providers and users to share knowledge and best practices in the management and use of Earth observation data, while working together to enhance the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS)”. Along this direction, the GEOSS Platform enabled the creation of community tailored views of GEOSS, supporting the development of GEOSS Community Portals –as mentioned in several presentations.

The Workshop highlighted the importance of knowledge generation, management, and sharing for evidence-based science and policy-making. This opens up the GEOSS Community to an increasing role of some stakeholder categories, including knowledge providers (scientists, experts, etc.) and knowledge service managers. As for the future evolution of the GEOSS Ecosystem, the GEOSS Evolve initiative is collecting and considering the needs coming from the different GEO stakeholders and the new opportunities offered by a technology landscape in a state of constant evolution.

The Workshop highlighted the importance of knowledge generation, management, and sharing for evidence-based science and policy-making.

GEOSS Technological Ecosystem

The Workshop demonstrated the effective advancements on the transition from the GCI (GEOSS Common Infrastructure) to a modern GEOSS Platform to provide stakeholders (users and providers) a more complete spectrum of (customizable) services and information. Four main components (i.e. GEOSS Yellow Pages, GEOSS Status Checker, GEO DAB and GEOSS Portal) provided by four different contributing organizations (respectively, UNIGE, USGS, CNR-IIA, ESA) are now integrated in a single and operational virtual system.

The Workshop demonstrated the GEOSS transition from adopting a Common Infrastructure approach to a more mature Web-based Platform one –i.e. the GEOSS Platform.

The need to respond to diversified user categories, highlighted at the Workshop, implies the importance of customizable tools. In this regard, the characteristics offered by the GEOSS Platform were much appreciated: the GEOSS Platform re-usable components have been enhanced with tools and functionalities to better serve user needs. These include: GEOSS Views, GEOSS APIs, GEOSS Widgets and GEOSS Mirrors.

The GEOSS Platform has a mid-term plan of sustainability and evolution through initiatives and programs funded by GEO members, such as: FGDC.gov (USGS) and the H2020 co-funded project EDGE (ESA).

Several technological solutions have been presented in the three days of the Workshop, supporting: data management and sharing, data access (e.g. Data Cubes and Analysis Ready Data), effective (big) data exploitation to avoid local downloads, and knowledge generation (e.g. Machine Learning). These technologies raise opportunities and pose a challenge for their inclusion in the GEOSS Technological Ecosystem. The transition from data to knowledge was one of the main topics raised by several presentations and by the discussion, requiring a specific attention on the design and implementation of the GEOSS Platform interaction with knowledge generation systems and services.

The GEOSS Platform Ecosystem must continue its evolution in response to evolving user requirements and include the most recent innovative technologies for data analytics to

generate knowledge from data.

The Regional Hubs Recently, in GEO, an important change was the introduction of Regional Hubs. This was reflected in the Workshop where the status and achievements of existing Regional Hubs (i.e. AmeriGEOSS for Americas, AOGEOSS for Asia and Oceania, AfriGEOSS for Africa, and EuroGEOSS for Europe) were presented. Moreover, other infrastructures, such as DBAR (Digital Belt and Road) and China GEOSS, were introduced as regional data hubs.

The different conceptions and scopes characterizing the Regional Hubs, as well as their possible integration and interaction with the GEOSS Platform, bring significant opportunities and challenges.

Several participants expressed their interest in being informed on and contributing to the presented regional hubs initiatives. On the other hand, there were many comments and questions about the need to avoid replication of efforts and to implement a uniformity of GEOSS users experience with the different Hubs. To this end, coordination is essential to maximize synergies and prevent unnecessary overlaps. In addition, it is important to further improve the coordination between regional programs and the GEO Flagships, Initiatives and Community Activities, to make sure that the best contributions are exploited and put to use for common goals.

The raising of the Regional Hubs initiatives poses significant opportunities (e.g. engagement) and challenges (e.g. effort replication) for GEOSS in the next years

New breed of interoperability tool/science to leverage GEOSS The increase of shared resources in terms of volume and variety raises significant challenges to GEOSS. While GEOSS in the past had only to make data systems interoperable, presently (and even more in the next future), it is asked to connect diverse systems handling the different services they offer – e.g. IaaS, PaaS, DaaS. There is the need of supporting new interoperability approaches and tools.

Many providers are already following the general trend of exposing data and services through customized Application Programming Interfaces (API). It is necessary to understand whether and how harmonizing them. A compromise between a top-down approach (i.e. standardization providing full harmonization) and bottom-up one (i.e. providers freely defining their APIs) is likely necessary. The experience gained with the GEOSS brokering approach will provide useful insights and important lessons learned.

The increase of shared resources volume and variety raises significant challenges to GEOSS that is asked to connect diverse online platforms, handling their services. There exists the need of supporting

new interoperability approaches and tools – see for example APIs and standards.

A focus on the GEO Global priorities: Climate, Disasters and SDGs The GEO Work Plan recognizes as Global Priorities the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The workshop highlighted the need for GEOSS to put a focus on these challenges and consider them as drivers of the specification and prioritization of the GEOSS Platform evolutions.

Earth Observations are of utmost importance in achieving the SDGs and GEOSS must be instrumental in integrating Earth Observation data into the methodology of measuring and achieving SDG indicators; machine learning - it was highlighted at the workshop, could play an important role here.

GEO makes available EO data in support of effective policy responses for climate change adaptation and mitigation, working with partners to enhance global observation systems in order to strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards. The GEOSS Platform is able to provide ad-hoc discovery and usage tools for climate-related data.

EO data contributes to disaster preparedness and better mitigation and response. GEO supports disaster resilience by increasing coordination of EO data to forecast and prepare for disasters, to reduce damage and to better manage and recover from disasters. Private sector representatives at the workshop (e.g. Airbus, Digital Globe and Planet) mentioned the possibility to open access to VHR data, in particular in support to major disasters or crises. Agreements will have to be discussed to have free access to data for disaster management and ease access for other applications.

The workshop highlighted the need for GEOSS to focus on the GEO Global Priorities and consider them as drivers of the specification and prioritization of the GEOSS Platform evolutions.

An increasing demand for easily usable EO data One of the main outcomes of the workshop was the recognized need to reduce time spent by users on data preparation, so to better focus on the study subject itself. Data Cubes and Analysis Ready Data (ARD) facilitates addressing this need.

More in general, participants mentioned the need to improve the present EO data usability by better documenting them with descriptive and data-derived metadata and legend graphics, as well as by providing data inspection methods, including the possibility to download subsets of data. A greater attention must be paid to data quality and integrity, EO data timeliness, and provenance tracking.

To this end, the advancement brought by the filtering capabilities (offered by the GEOSS Platform) was recognized. As for the future improvements, user profiling might significantly help: by better tracking and profiling data users, and, consequently, incentivizing users to share their knowledge on data use.

Attendees recognized the need to reduce time spent on data preparation, so to better focus on the study itself.

User and Data Metrics

Data providers require information on their data use (who discovers what, who downloads what, where they end up in the ranking, performance assessment, etc.) and feedbacks on user satisfaction, on a regular basis. This is important to improve their service –e.g. service portfolio, coverage, etc. CEOS is developing a user metrics best practice in this respect. In addition to the present one, advanced services are needed to monitor the overall use of the GEOSS Platform dealing with the types of data accessed, the metadata consulted, etc.

The GEOSS Platform needs to consider enhanced mechanisms to monitor user interests linked to resources discovered and accessed.

Picture of some Workshop participants

Annex A: List of Organizations by Country represented at the workshop

Organization Country:

AdviceGEO Germany

AEWC USA - Alaska

AIR Centre Portugal

Airbus Defence and Space UK

Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission USA

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Laboratory of Forest Management & Remote Sensing Greece

AtlantOS / MARUM - University of Bremen Germany

Austria Climate Data Center Austria

AWS Germany

BKG Germany

BLB Norway

Canadian Space Agency Canada

Catapult UK

CEDARE Egypt

Central European University (CEU), Systems Laboratory (Syslab) Hungary

Central European University / ISEPEI Project Hungary

CEOS International

China HEAD Aerospace China

Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI) China

CIESIN (Center for Earth Science Information Network), Columbia University USA

CLIMATE-KIC UK

CloudSigma Switzerland

CNES France

CNR-Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research Italy

Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura Italy

CREAF Spain

Deimos Imaging Portugal

Deutscher Wetterdienst Germany

Development Seed USA

D-GEO Germany Germany

Dias Japan Japan

DigitalGlobe UK

Dotphoton Switzerland

EARSC Belgium

ECMWF UK

Ecopotential Greece

EGI Foundation Netherlands

Environment Agency Austria Austria

EOMAP Germany

ESA Italy

Esri Inc. USA

Esri Italia Italy

Eurac Research Italy

Euroconsult France

EuroGeographics Belgium

European Commission (DG RTD) Belgium

European Commission, DG Joint Research Centre Italy

European Union Satellite Centre Spain

Evenflow SPRL Belgium

Eversis Poland

FAO Italy

Federal Geographic Data Committee USA

Friedrich Schiller University Jena Germany

GBIF Secretariat Denmark

GEANT UK

GEO BON Germany

GEO Secretariat UK

GEOCRI -Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth China

Geoscience Australia Australia

Geosys UK

Global Healthsites Mapping Project France

Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) USA

Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) at Ferderal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) Germany

GMV Spain

GTNH Germany

HCP international Netherlands

Helmholtz Centre Geesthacht, Institute of Coastal Research Germany

HZG Germany

Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, National Technical University of Ukraine Ukraine

Infrastructure de Recherche Système Terre France

Institute of Geodesy and Cartography Poland

INSTITUTO GEOGRAFICO NACIONAL Spain

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) Nepal

IPTSAT Italy

IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement France

ISMN - International Soil Moisture Network Austria

Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia Italy

Jaxa/GEO SEC Japan Jozef Stefan Institute, Department of Environmental Sciences, Slovenia Slovenia

Legos France

MINES ParisTech France

Ministry of Higher Education and Research, France France

Mountain Research Initiative Switzerland

Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin Germany

Namibia Statistics Agency Namibia

NASA USA

National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences Egypt

National Institute for Space Research - INPE Brazil National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Research Institute of Geology and Geoinformation, Geological Survey of Japan Remote Sensing Research Group Japan

National Institute of Statistics, Ministry of Planning Cambodia

National Observatory of Athens, NOA Greece

North Slope of Alaska USA

OGC Belgium

PCI Geomatics USA

Planet Germany

Radiant.Earth USA

RED Pavia Italy

Remote Sensing Centre Institute of Geodesy and Cartography, Poland Poland

RHEA Italy

SANSA South Africa

Sapienza Università di Roma Italy Satellite Surveying and Mapping Application Center, National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation of China China

Serco Italy

SMHI Sweden Space Research Institute of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and State Space Agency of Ukraine Ukraine

Spacemetric Sweden

Statistics Sweden Sweden

Sysdeco ItaliaIta Italy

TeamDev Srl Italy

The Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) China

The National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute" Ukraine

THINKlab, University of Salford UK

Tor Vergata University Italy

TU Delft The Netherlands

UK Governent Earth Observation Service UK

UNEP GRID-Geneva Switzerland/United Nations

UNESCO France/United Nations

University of Bayreuth Germany

University of Calabria Italy

University of Geneva Switzerland University of Ghana, Center for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Services (CERSGIS) Ghana

University of Oxford UK

University of Surrey UK

University Suez, Egypt Egypt

UNOOSA Austria/United Nations

UNOSAT Switzerland/United Nations

USGS USA

VisioTerra France

VITO Belgium

WFP Italy/United Nations

World Resources Institute Germany

WWF-Tanzania Tanzania

Annex B: Matching of the Workshop sessions against the meeting focus areas

Annex C: Important Engagements immediately resulted from the 3rd GEO

Data Providers workshop •Integration to the GEOSS Platform GEO Flagships and Initiatives

•27 New Data providers added to the pipeline

•6 New Community Portals using GEOSS Platform re-usable components

•2 Planned major advancement in the Platform evolution

Community Portals

Organization NEW Data / Service/ Knowledge Provider

Use GEOSS VIEW

Use GEOSS Mirror

Platform Evolution

UNESCO (2 catalogues) x

Jaxa open data Catalogue x

Radiant.Earth x

UNOOSA Knowledge Platform x

Copernicus services x

TEP – Thematic Exploitation Platforms x

Austria Climate Change Center x

Citizen Science, CtiSci x

GTN-H Global Terrestrial Network of Hydrology (14 Data Providers)

x x x

GCOS customized Portal with ECVs x x x

GEO FS: GEOGLAM / GEOBON x x

AfriGEOSS x x x

EPOS – European Volcano Portal x x x

H2020 GEO Essential project x x x

PREP, The Partnership for Resilience and Preparedness

x x x

The GEOSS Platform towards a

Knowledge Platform x

Data Providers will benefit from Peer Review of GEO DMPs WP

x

Special thanks goes to:

● the Host ESA European Space Agency

● to the Sponsors of the Workshop

Swiss Confederation Esri Development Seed Team Dev SRL – GIS Action

● to the entire GEOSS Platform Operations team:

Joost van Bemmelen, Guido Colangeli, Diana Mastracci, Eliana Lisanti, Alessio Toracco, ESA; Stefano Nativi, Paolo Mazzetti, Mattia Santoro, Roberto Roncella, Mariella Liberti, CNR; Gregory Giuliani University of Geneva; Elrich Frazier, Michelle Anthony USGS-FGDC; Steve Browdy; Paola De Salvo GEO Secretariat; Max Craglia JRC; Ivan de Loatch USGS; GEOSS Evolve co - chairs.

● to all staff from the various contributing Organizations who helped and greatly supported before and during the event:

Angela Lombardi and Deirdre O Neill from ESA (On site registration); Hendrik Baeyens (Website, Registration process, Hackathon), Maddie West, Natasha Klein(Communication); Chloe Tiberghien (Invitation letters, Registration process), Steven Ramage (Moderator and advocacy of the event); James Norris (Slido moderator) GEO Secretariat;